July 4: A Fine Day for a ‘Parade of Horribles’

By

Christopher Shea

Jul 4, 2012 4:15 pm ET

When philosophers or judges think their opponents are exaggerating the potential dire consequences of one line of argument or another, they often deploy the phrase “parade of horribles” to mock the hand-wringing.

Indeed, in her concurring opinion, Justice Ginsburg accused Chief Justice John Roberts of brandishing the “broccoli horrible” when he argued that, had the Supreme Court accepted the argument that the Commerce Clause gives Congress the right to penalize people if they fail to buy health insurance, then it could also penalize them for declining to buy broccoli. She elaborated:

When contemplated in its extreme, almost any power looks dangerous. The commerce power, hypothetically, would enable Congress to prohibit the purchase and home production of all meat, fish, and dairy goods, effectively compelling Americans to eat only vegetables. Cf. Raich, 545 U. S., at 9; Wickard, 317 U. S., at 127–129. Yet no one would offer the “hypothetical and unreal possibilit[y],” Pullman Co. v. Knott, 235 U. S. 23, 26 (1914), of a vegetar­ian state as a credible reason to deny Congress the author­ity ever to ban the possession and sale of goods. THE CHIEF JUSTICE accepts just such specious logic when he cites the broccoli horrible as a reason to deny Congress the power to pass the individual mandate.

I always assumed that “parade of horribles” was pure rhetoric, possibly imported from philosophy. (I even imagined British philosophy, specifically.) But now, thanks to Ben Zimmer, I have learned that the phrase refers to real parades, parades taking place today: